nvidia gpu, AMD chip? i know nothing about motherboards

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Hey guys, I am bit by bit upgrading to a half decent rig.

Just bought a BFG geforce 9800gtx+ OC 1gb and am hoping to upgrade to an AMD phenom 2 x4 955 or 965 if i can afford it,

is it possible to run AMD chip and geforce graphics? if so, what motherboard do i need, or range of motherboards, cos i know nothing about them at all.

what is good in a motherboard to look for, what spec etc?

Thanks!
 
The geforce will run fine with a AMD chip.

Will you be using any of your older parts from your current system.
 
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yeah, that looks pretty sweet
i am starting to understand more about motherboards, but if you guys have nothing better to do it would massively aid my understanding if you could give me a run down of what things are good on a mobo eg
chipset
memory (i know ddr3 is best and more slots means more potential)
system bus
FSB
unlockers
l2/l3 cache

thanks
 
I dont think an Nforce chipset will allow an AMD cpu to have its cores unlocked, only think its certain AMD chipsets that allow this.

having more memory slots that actually have memory sticks in them can reduce overclock potential.

L2 and L3 are found on the CPU itself, the L3 on some AthlonII X4 cpus have been known to unlock to creat a PhenomII X4 sort of cpu.

That MSI motherboard doesnt have SATA and USB3.0, only the newest 8** series of AMD chipsets, and newer Intel chipsets usually have this feature.

an AM3 cpu will work in either AM3/AM2+ or AM2 boards.

an AM2 CPU wont work in a AM3 motherboard because it wont have an DDR3 memory controller
 
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cool. this helps more, more to look out for when buying. thanks.

so basically the best thing to do is get amd phenom x4 with an amd chipset paired with my 9800.

or should i get an intel chip and nforce mobo? intel are more expensive though :/ sorry i am so rubbish at this i dont know anything past the basics
 
or should i get an intel chip and nforce mobo? intel are more expensive though :/ sorry i am so rubbish at this i dont know anything past the basics

you wont find an Nforce motherboard that will take the latest i3/i5 or i7 cpus.

one question to ask is do you ever want a multi card(sli or crossfire) setup in the future?
 
possibly but not near future.
i have just bought this 9800gtx+ 1gb and it will do me for a while, i could SLI that but i cant afford another card probably this year and the next card i am likely to get will be DX11 thus i wont be able to afford CxF/SLI anyway, cos they will be £100 or a bit less but not much more.

wow mobos are still so vague to me, i didnt know that about nforce and i cores. is nforce just one type then?
 
Nvidia makes Nforce chipsets, but I actually think they dont produce them anymore, instead concentrating on graphics cards and other stuff.
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Intel make motherboard chipsets that only work with there cpu's and depending on which board will support either a single card from either ATI or Nvidia, or SLI and Crossfire, such as this one for an i7 cpu- http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-235-GI -which as the description says, will do both either SLI or Crossfire.

this one for i5- http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-203-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1495 also does SLI or Crossfire
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AMD only make chipsets for themselves and only support either one card from either NVIDIA or ATI, but not SLI, only Crossfire(but even this depends on which version of the chipset it is)

Only the 790GX/FX and 890GX/FX chipsets do crossfire in whats called a symmetrical way, spliting the pci express lanes equally for both cards, the GX do it at 8X/8X and the FX does it at 16X/16X

the other chipsets such as 770/860/880G will only run the second graphics card at 4X speed while the first card gets a full 16X, this causes performance issues with crossfire.
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From what you just said, an AMD chipset such as this motherboard

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-410-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1782

will be what you want, it will only ever be good for a single card, but has SATA and USB3.0
 
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you can use one Nvidia card into AMD chipset motherboard that normal running but if 2 of Nvidia card enable as SLI then only work with Nvidia chipset like ATI Xfire run with AMD chipset

1 Nvidia or ATI card run with either AMD or Nvidia chipset motherboard

2 Nvidia cards run only with Nvidia chipset as SLI mode
2 ATI card run only with AMD Chipset as Xfire
 
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